June022011

Journalism.org :: Last week alone, a government crackdown in Yemen reportedly killed more than 100 demonstrators; the European Union imposed new sanctions on Syria as reports surfaced that as many as 1,000 people have been killed in government crackdowns; Egypt decided to charge ex-president Hosni Mubarak in the deaths of protestors; and NATO announced a 90-day military extension in Libya as violence continued to escalate. But despite of the current situation Mideast unrest coverage decreased 87% from February to May 2011.

May302011

Reuters :: An Egyptian administrative court fined ousted President Hosni Mubarak and two former officials 540 million Egyptian pounds ($91 million) on Saturday for cutting mobile and Internet services during protests in January.

October072010

The chairman of the Al Ahram Group, whose newspaper was internationally critcised for publishing an altered image of world leaders at recent Middle East peace talks, defended the photoshopping as an artistic illustration of the story.

“We published all the photos after the Washington meetings, and then we had another meeting 14 days later in Sharm el Sheik led by Mubarak [the Egyptian president],” Said told delegates.

The subsequent feature in the paper was labelled “special report” and used five photos from the meeting, of which the altered image was one. According to Said, there was a caption accompanying the changed picture describing how Egypt was leading the piece talks

The story of the “tampered” image was picked up by international news outlets, including the Guardian and Telegraph, after first being spotted by a blogger.

But Said condemned the way in which the photo was republished, saying it was stripped of its titling, caption, artist’s signature and context.

“I can give at least 100 cases that did the same thing to illustrate a case even using Obama himself,” he said, referring to criticism of a recent Economist front cover.